Police in Western Australia have confirmed they sent multiple officers to an emergency call after receiving reports of a crying toddler and a man repeatedly screaming "Why don't you die?" Instead of a real emergency, however, the cops found a man yelling at a spider.
According to the Guardian, the incident took place on the first day of 2019 in Perth, when a concerned passerby walking outside a house heard a toddler screaming and a man repeatedly shouting "Why don't you die?" and called the police.
When cops arrived at the scene, they only found a man with a "serious fear of spiders" trying to kill the arachnid.
BBC reports that Wanneroo Police said in a now-deleted tweet there had been no injuries during the incident - "except to spider."
"Police spoke with all parties who advised that husband had only been trying to kill a spider (has serious fear of spiders). Apologised for inconvenience to police," wrote that Wanneroo Police.
See a screenshot of their post below:
Wanneroo Police are reporting that multiple police responded to a job this morning; turned out it was just someone trying to kill a spider .. #police #wanneroo pic.twitter.com/7VX1pq9O31
— Policing News AU (@PoliceAU) January 2, 2019
A spokesman for WA police said to the Guardian that the post had only been deleted because it included the screenshot of police communications. "There's nothing actually wrong with the contents of it," he said. "There were just some typos in it, things like that."
The incident generated quite a few laughs on social media:
Just another normal day in Australia with our unpleasantly large spiders!
— Lyam Jay (@Lyam_31) January 2, 2019
Thankfully the @WannerooPolice responded to the incident pic.twitter.com/VRxosRLQ7c
"Excuse me I need help, theres an intruder in my house. He has 8 legs and and is very fast. Send help"
— Bee (@BeeSeaCC) January 2, 2019
Did you bring 4 sets of handcuffs?
— Matt Ash (@MattisWriting) January 2, 2019
While it is not clear what species of spiders it was in this incident, Australia is home to some of the world's largest and most poisonous spiders. Last year, a video of a giant spider inside a car in Australia went viral, horrifying thousands around the world.
